dm12fandomcom-20200215-history
Bobby's Flash project
Proposal: For my final project, I’d very much like to work in Flash. I’ve never learned to use it, but I’ve always enjoyed the products made from it. Videos and games alike, I enjoy it. The easiest ways to learn this will likely be just looking up online videos about how to use it. Along with the basic tips the program gives, and my computer neighbors have experience in it, and should probably be able to help if I hit a wall and they’re able to answer. My Final project will be a flash game. As I’ve yet to delve into flash, I don’t know how complex of a game it will be. However it will include animations, story, and basic game elements. Our group of 12’s have decided to journalize this using a wiki, which we will all share, having individual pages describing our progress, struggles, and difficulties. http://www.Dm12.wikia.com The first few days will be spent researching and practicing how to use basic tools and elements of flash. Including animations, buttons, symbols, and etc. After that, I’ll probably practice a few quick animations, just a few frames long, to make sure I understand it and everything is working well. Then I’ll move onto the framework of my game, and spend the rest of the unit designing the game, and polishing it. Week 1: April 30th - May 4th A lot got done this week, although it was mostly experimentation. I've made a few flash animations, all of which are just experimenting with motion and movement in general. I made a car drive down a road, and a man fly up into the air. Pretty basic stuff, but it should be useful. I also programmed some physics to make a ball bounce up and down infinitely, which will be used to make a person jump later on. Week 2: May 7th - 11th This week was the actual start of my game. I've decided that the game is going to be a platformer. So I need some basic jumping physics and obstacles for the character to move through. I've started the initial title card animation. I so far have the main character of the game walking, when an alien spacecraft flies overhead, then crashes. He then walks up to it. That's all I have so far. What it's involved is multiple tweens, and multiple animations for individual body parts. However having the main character as he'll appear in the game makes this much easier, as now I have his animations and movement. I might need to add jumping animations, but other than that, I have my main character. I don't know what I'll do next. Probably just a title card, and then start working on the actual game. Week 3: May 14th-17th The first day was surprisingly difficult. What I wanted to do was add to the animation. I wanted to make an alien jump out of the spacecraft and run away from the wreckage. I had a problem with some of my animation stops totally stopping this from happening. I managed to fix it, and then made a title card. Making the title card into a button also posed some challenges. These challenges were mainly with hitboxing, so that it actually made it a clickable button. Not much else was done on the first day. The second day was all about the beginning of the game. With the help of the internet and Kevin, I've made my character move. I've got him going left and right, and up and down. Now I just need him to actually jump instead of fly away forever. I've also added a text box, that when moused over, will tell you the controls. Week 4: May 22nd-25th This week was a short week, but a massive amount of work got done. The first thing worked on was jumping. Before this, the character could only "fly" around, without any resistance to gravity, or any limit to this height. Now he can actually jump up and down, repeatedly. Then I added the ability so that when he walks left, he actually turns around. The last thing done was hit testing this week. It's been made so that the character cannot simply walk through walls, or at least, the first wall we have. He now teleports to a secondary map, where all the gameplay occurs. Like in the first stage, I have small help boxes in this stage. This time, however, they are framed as "?" that again, when moused over show some helpful information. Week 5: May 28th - June 1st This week was all about the level map. The first thing I did was copy all the code I had from the first map, and put it into the second one. Now the character moves in an identical way in both scenes. Next, I drew out and coloured a very basic map, with a hole, some quicksand, and some enemies. To the enemy, I added a hit test so that if you touch him, you're sent to a GAME OVER screen. There's a warning before you run into him though. Now all I need to do is make it so that you actually fall into the holes, and sink in the quicksand. Week 6: June 4th-8th The first day of this week, I managed to make the character actually fall into a hole. Making him fall was easy enough, it just required some way to make him die. I kind of cheated on this one. I took the enemy that I had before, and copied him into the hole. This way, while the player can't see it, if you fall into the hole, you're hitting an enemy, and dying. I also made custom "GAME OVER" screens for both current methods of failing, as well as one for if you choose not to play the game. The second day of this week was about quicksand. I had, very early on, managed to botch some hit testing code that made the character sink instead of stop on the top of the object. So I decided to use it to make quicksand. Drawing it out and placing it, I have essentially made a little trap. It also makes you sink faster if you try to jump. But if you just run across, you can survive. The third, and final day of this week, and the final day of this project was spent making the endings. I've simply added a little conclusion to what happens if you catch the alien. It actually gives you a choice in whether to save or capture the alien you've been chasing. Each choice gives you a little blurb about what happens afterward, and the consequences of that choice. Other than that, I'm pretty much done. Conclusion For my final project in Digital Media 12, I chose to work with Adobe Flash. Initially, it was just testing some small animations, and some small physics to make things bounce. After that, I moved on to what I decided would be my main project; a flash game. I started out making an introductory animation, and then proceeded to make a basic videogame, with jumping, holes, and enemies. The best and most challenging part of this whole thing was trying to understand scripting. While I still don’t understand most of it, I do have a relatively firm grasp on some of the basics. I can make objects, make them move, make it so when a certain key is pressed they move, and program in restrictions. The least enjoyable part of this whole project was when I’d get stuck, and have no idea what to do. Thankfully Kevin, who sat next to me, knew much more about Flash, and was always willing to help out if I needed it. I think the most interesting thing about this project is all the little silly bits I added to the game. Each way to die has its own individual ending text, usually blaming or putting down the player for dying so easily. I also added an option early one, where it asks if you want to keep playing. If you click “No” then you’ll get a speech, confused as to why you’d open the game if you didn’t want to play, but okay whatever. I’d also like to note that I designed the game for a relatively small frame, so I would recommend playing it in the size of the frame of the Flash file, not the size the SWF file defaults to. Otherwise you get to see a whole bunch of blank space, and some of the behind the scenes things I did. Overall I think this was an enjoyable project, which actively made me think about ways to solve problems, and ways to make a game. While not a totally in depth exploration of Flash, I think I learned enough from it that I could use it on my own in the future, for projects, or just as a hobby.